INKing Out Loud

Hey everybody, happy Sunday evening, 10:09 PM. I'm getting ready to go to bed, but I wanted to do my daily sketch here online. It's been a while. I see D-Ray is in the house. D-Ray, great to see you. Hope all's well. Long time no see. Hope you're doing well. So yeah, I'm on just only 10 minutes, 15 probably at the most. Let me do— let's do a sketch. Hope you guys are having a great day. I am. I am going to sketch. Well, You guys have seen me sketch something like this before, kind of my go-to sketch. It's my go-to bridge. I just like revisiting this one over and over and doing it in different ways and colors. It's just so much fun for me. Hey, Becky's in the house! Becky, great to see you. Hope all's well. This is so fun. I love when you guys pop on. I love when I pop on. I've just been, uh, so tired at night. I haven't been popping on, but tonight, you know what, I just miss seeing you guys, and I still didn't do a sketch today, so I figured I'd pop on for a few. I'm keeping this one fast and loose. And we'll see what it ends up turning out like. Becky, Becky, hope you're doing well. So let me know what you guys have been up to. Let's see, we'll throw an arch in here. Boom, we got our arch going. Do another one back in here. Have the Sharpie out because I'm going to add some color on this and I don't want it to get too mucky, so I'm starting off with a Sharpie. All right, that's good enough for a quick outline. Let's break out— I have some watercolor here, so I'm just gonna throw on some watercolor, I think, tonight. Actually, before I do that, I want to throw on some, some ink that will bleed a little bit. Hey, Linda's in the house! Great to see you, Linda. Hope all's well. It's great seeing you guys. Awesome, awesome seeing you guys. So I was, uh, I was blessed last week to be able to spend time with Roo at the workshop. Wow, it was just an amazing experience, not only being able to work with Roo and be inspired by him, but also to be surrounded by a community of artists and very, very positive community. So that was a lot of fun, and I had to push myself because I'm not good in situations where I'm going into large groups of people I don't know. I'm very, very I'm very introverted, so it was kind of pushing myself in a good way. You know, we always have to— I've always believed in growing as a person and becoming better than I was the day before and just trying, you know, different things. So Stepping out of my comfort zone is tough, and it paid off, and it was great, great time. So Linda, I know you're interested in the bridge sketch I had posted last week. I had actually ended up giving that one away while I was at the workshop. To one of the ladies in my class. So I am more than happy to do another one. If you like the one you see here tonight, you're welcome to have this one. Um, just let me know, and I always appreciate your interest. Becky says, Discover Sharp, you can draw on top of jelly prints made with acrylic paint. Ooh, that's cool. Becky, that's awesome. Yeah, Becky, I love the— I love those prints you've been doing. They're so different, something I've never tried before, so it's always fun to see different things. So I'm so glad you're posting those. So I've It's actually something really— it's brand new to me and, uh, it's really intriguing. I love the, um, kind of abstract patterns that you're able to get. So cool. I'm just literally dipping right into this ink here and spreading it on. Linda says, "What a fun experience. We all thought about all of you for the week." Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, you know, if you have any questions about the workshop, let me know. I'll see if I can answer some. I'll talk a little bit about whatever comes to my brain. I'm not— I don't have anything specific in mind. I guess the big thing really was just the amazing community of people. That was so fun. I believe I was probably the youngest person in the group. I forget how many people attended. 100 and— I could be way off with this, maybe 180 or something. So let's see, I threw down some Apple Snail ink. I love Apple Snail ink. It is my favorite ink color right here. Boom. Um, actually I should have shaken it up a little bit more and get some darker tones. Let's throw some aqua in the sky. Actually, let's wet it a little bit. I'm gonna pre-wet it. And we'll throw some aqua— not aqua, it's turquoise. Some turquoise watercolor paint up here in the sky area. Keep this fast, loose. Let some of the colors kind of bleed together. And I got allergies, so excuse me, I gotta blow my nose here. I'm sorry about that. All right, I'm back. Um, oh boy. So this is cool. I love these quick bridges. Oh, I love that, that cool color in the sky. I'm not going to use too many different colors on this. I'm going to use aqua— keep saying aqua, oh my gosh— teal, and I'm going to throw some yellow down, I think. And actually, I think I want to break out a purplish color down here for the road. Uh, proud of you for pushing yourself. Hey, thank you, Becky. D-Ray says hi. D-Ray says Inklings, awesome. So this workshop was so cool. It was, um, what I really liked about the way Roo ran his class First of all, it was a pretty— it was a small class, which I loved because I just felt like you get to know people in the class better, which is great. I think we had 5 people including me. I think there were 5 including myself. Uh, 6 with Roo, so we had 6 people. And what was really cool is that we were able to pretty much work on anything we wanted to. We were given some, you know, some— Ru did some demonstrations for us. He gave us some ideas and brought some books in that we could paint on the pages, but it was very open-ended where we— it's pretty much whatever you put into it is what you got out of it. And I actually, I spent some time just talking to to him about marketing artwork and, you know, getting some pointers and guidance with things like that, some strategy type of things, which was really helpful for me. And I pushed myself to do some animal stuff. You may have seen the lobsters I posted. So that's, you know, animals, as you guys know, are out of my wheelhouse. But the whole week was kind of about just pushing and learning and just trying different things. Um, and it was just the whole environment was really lent itself to that where you just felt free to try and learn and push. So I love that about the workshop. Lobsters are great. Thanks, D-Ray, appreciate that. Um, Ru also— he also kind of made us all feel like we were at home. He, uh, just the way he set up his room, he brought his teapot and some builder's tea to share with everybody. So we would have tea time and watch some demonstrations, do some work. So it was a very kind of a relaxed atmosphere, which I really appreciated as well. I'm really liking the colors here. This is kind of cool, this purple. Get the aqua going on. It keeps— oh my gosh, if I say aqua again, teal, turquoise. Oh my gosh, my brain's tired, guys. I got school tomorrow. Oh boy. Linda says, "Tea makes everything better, at least I think so." It does. Tea does make everything better. Not only the tea itself, but you know, the whole social aspect that goes along with tea, or the Zen aspect of tea, right? Just kind of sitting there, sipping your tea, and enjoying the moment, which is something that I need to do more of and just kind of slow down and just enjoy the moments more and more. But it was— that was, uh, pretty cool. The towel here. All right, so just keeping it loose here, going to blow some of this back a little bit. Just kind of tilt it up. Be playful with your art. Use gravity. Gravity is one of our friends, one of our tools we could use when creating, right? Kind of let the gravity movement— I'm going to hold this up. This is looking really cool on the road here. I'm loving those colors. So I'm using Fabriano 140-pound Cold press watercolor paper. Um, I like the way this is drying in here. Pretty fun. Let's see, what do I want to break out? Um, Let's see, just going to throw some blue on here, break out some of this red. I'm gonna let it run down the page. One of the things I like to do is I like to work at a little bit of an angle when I'm doing these inks or watercolors, just to let things run down the page and kind of bleed together. So I very rarely will work on a flat surface. I usually, usually have stuff angled. When this dries, I'm going to come back in with a Sharpie or probably my Pilot pen and add some detail or more lines on it. Um, where's the EnerGel? So Roo was kind enough to bring some, some tools along, let us try things, and he actually gave me an EnerGel pen here that I'm gonna grab. One of the things I do like about the EnerGels after trying it is that you can use it on wet surfaces. Which is really cool, something that you can't do with a Sharpie. So I'm just going to throw some of this Energel on here, just let it bleed, just soften the edges in places. Let's see, we've got a railing kind of coming back here. It's gonna guardrail coming back here as well. Kind of give the illusion of perspective happening. Kind of add some— let it bleed here a little bit on the side. There you go. I'm liking the way that's looking. We also have back in here some of the cables coming down. We got some cables coming up from here. It's looking pretty cool. Gravity is our friend. Rotate and tilt. Yes, you got it, D-Ray. That would make quite a bumper sticker. Oh boy, I'm not sure what— not sure what I said that would make a bumper sticker. Gravity is our friend. Let me know, I'm curious. Let things run. I keep paper at an angle. Energel, new product. So this is, um, Ru is always talking about this pen. This is one of his go-tos. It's the Pilot— sorry, not Pilot, the Pentel EnerGel needle tip point. So it's kind of new to me. I have used it in the past before, um, but not as much as I should have. So I'm glad I was able to become reacquainted with it again. It's always fun to try new tools out. You know what I'm gonna do? I just— you guys might think I'm a little whack. I hope not, but actually, I don't mind if you think I'm a little wacky. I want to throw red on here. I want to throw red on here for the railing. I'mma zoom in so you guys can see it. Flip it around a little bit. Ooh, I kinda like— I'm kinda liking that. I'm kinda liking that. Let's throw some more some red here down at the base as well. So I said it was gonna be on for like 10 or 15 minutes. I don't know how much time they've been on, but I think I'm gonna wrap up in a few here. Oh yeah, this is cool. I'm liking this red I threw on here. Something really kind of unexpected. I'm going to bleed it down a little bit onto the railing, the guardrail. Kind of wet my brush and pull it down a little bit. And I'm just dipping my brush in some more red and I'm kind of just tapping it down. Kind of move this around again a little bit. Cool. Yeah, it's a Pentel. Here, I'll hold it up here. Pentel. Sorry if my camera's blurry on it. I don't know if I can get it focused. So that's the pen right there. Throwing in some red. Wacky, he says. Oh yeah, little wacky, little wacky. Let's grab some more of that turquoise. Hey, I got the color right! I said turquoise. Finally, I finally said the right color. I didn't say aqua. And it says looking great. Hey, thanks, Linda. I know I am. I didn't do my hair though. Oh, you mean the painting? Yeah, the painting is looking pretty good. Um, I'm liking it. I think I'm at a stopping point now and I need to wait for it to dry and I can finish it up tomorrow with some more details and stuff on it. I'm liking the colors here. Well, I want— I think I'm going to throw some of this. I want to tie some of this up in here as well. I'm just going to lift, lift. Let's throw some of it in here. I think this is going to dry pretty interesting down here in this area. Um, I love what's happening here. I don't know if you guys can see this. Let me zoom in. This is actually drying really— this is actually pretty amazing what's happening right— where's my frame? Let me frame that out. Where's my frame? Uh, where's my frame with the 1-inch squares? Hmm, looking in the magic drawers here, in the magic drawers. Where is my frame with the 1-inch cutouts? I can't find it. Dagnabbit. Oh well, don't know where it is. Usually it's right here in grab-and-go position, but I don't know where the heck I put it. So anyway, right in this area here, it— I don't know if the camera's picking up this up as well as it is here in person, but this is really cool. This is actually my favorite part of the painting right here. I'm not gonna touch it. It's just drying in a really cool way. Where's that frame? Where did that frame go? Hey, Deborah's in the house! Deborah says, looks fabulous. Thank you, Linda. Love the road colors. Yeah, yeah, the road colors are so cool. There's actually a really hard, cool hard edge that's happening here. Check this out. Maybe you guys can see it better now. This, this right here, I love, love this part of the painting. Dang, how the heck did I do that? Okay, I wish I could recreate that again. I love this hard edge. Boom. Yeah, this turned out to be a cool little bridge for sure. How the heck did I make that? That's what's so fun, right? You just, you don't know what's going to happen when you use watercolors or you use inks or mixed media. I like to use mixed media stuff. It's just always so fun to see what's going to happen.

So blot this a little bit right there.

There we go. And I'm just throwing down some yellow along the edge, just trying to tie this together with some yellowish colors going to kind of here, down and across. And then I want to bring back some of that snail— apple snail on here. So we throw some of that on and then we'll wrap up. Hey Leslie, good to see you. Welcome. Leslie says, um, this is one of my favorites of yours. Oh, thank you so much, that is so cool. I'm glad you guys are loving these, these, uh, bridge sketches. Here's what— here's the sketch that started it all for me. Let me bring it out. Some of you guys have seen this. This is, um A little Post-it note. This is the sketch I did one day when I was covering a class. So 5 minutes, I just kind of had a Post-it and a pencil and I did a quick sketch. This sketch here has set the tone or has been the starting point for all these other kind of perspective bridge views. And no two are ever the same, which is really fun. And I love their wonkiness. I love the colors. I just love bridges in general for their symbolism, you know, for their connections, right? They connect people and places. I'm love— this Apple Snail ink color is— I said before, this is my favorite ink. So I'm literally just dipping in the bottle. I hope I can get more of this stuff. Uh, I'm just dipping in the bottle and I'm going to pull out this bridge a little bit more by outlining it. Very loose though. This ink gives a little more depth, just a little more interest to it. Kind of do the same thing here. Oh my gosh, let's pull the arch out a little bit as well here. And we got this bridge in the background, this other truss system back here. Let's pull that out a little bit more. I don't want to overdo it, so I'm going to leave it at that. Oops, sorry, off the screen a little bit. Drea says, stopping for tonight, then adding some details. Drea, thank you so much. I always love when you summarize what I'm saying. It's so helpful, so cool. So, it is so appreciated. You guys are, are so fun. I'm pretty excited. I think I have a— I think there will be some really interesting and fun things coming up this year that I'm working on. Definitely need to go back to doing workshops. I know I haven't done it in a long time. School has just been really, really busy. I think the summer would be great to do a, um, some kind of workshop online. And there's other things I'm working on as well. I definitely want to keep creating for sure. All right, that's it. I'm not going to add any more colors. I'm going to let that dry, and then tomorrow I'll just add a few, um, some line— some more lines to it, and we'll call it a day on this one. Here you can see it. We'll zoom out. Pretty cool. Becky says, love no rules mixed media. Yes. Yeah. And your prints you're working on definitely shows that, Becky. It shows that you're just having fun. You're being playful. So cool. So, so cool. Linda, that special part with the hard edge looks like you dropped a tiny droplet of water to get it. Oh yeah, right. It does look like that. I'll zoom in. I don't, I don't know how it happened. It's definitely possible. We'll have to go back to the replay, then we'll wrap it up and again dip it into one of my favorite inks. Red D-Ray says we appreciate you. Hey, no, no, no. Thank you, D-Rape. I appreciate you guys so much. Without your encouragement, being here, your fun-ness— is that a word? Your fun-ness? Your positivity. Thank you guys so much for keeping me coming back. Um, this is awesome. This is fun. I love doing this. I need to be on more doing this. Linda says a workshop would be fun. Yeah, Linda, I miss you guys. I miss the Inklings. I miss our Zoom workshops. I agree. I totally agree with you. I will do a workshop this summer. Yeah, definitely. We'll talk about topics. Bum bum bum bum bum. School's always busy. Yeah, school is very busy, which is okay. It's more so that it's busy, but I put so much into it during the school day that I'm honestly exhausted when I come home. And I'm not bragging, but I really, I will admit, I put a lot into it. It just takes up so much mental and physical energy. Uh, in a good way, not a complaint at all. It's just I'm so tired when I get home from school, so that's— and at night I'm tired, so that's pretty much why. Uh, you're welcome, Deborah. Thanks for sharing. Thank you, Deborah. Thank you, Dario. Onto the replay to check how I did this. There we go. Hey guys, if you have any final questions, let me know in the chat. I appreciate you I'm gonna head out here soon. By the way, I hope with all the wacky weather that's been happening that everybody out there, you guys are all safe and everybody's okay. I know it's been really crazy. We had tornado warnings here yesterday. Thankfully we didn't get any up here in North Jersey where I live, but I believe in South Jersey there were tornadoes that went through. I don't know what the destruction was, but yeah, just be safe, guys. All right, um, so this one's gonna dry up. I will show you guys what it looks like tomorrow. I'm actually gonna post a picture of it tonight, progress shot. And again, it's almost done. Just gonna come back with— in with either my Sharpie or— by the way, hold on, before I leave You know I always hate saying goodbye. Let's, uh, let me zoom out for a sec. Let me show you guys my field journal. I've shown this a few times before. This field journal is— this got so much stuff in it. This got some really good use last week when I was at the workshop. I carried this everywhere I went. You can ask Roo about that. This thing's a workhorse, let me tell you. I mean, I have my sketchbook in here from— that I started on my New York City excursion. I have some— I won't show you everything, but I got some NYC sketches in here. Here's the Vessel Building. This is a cool little Moleskine. Some people say moleskin, moleskine. Moleskine, that might be an Italian company, but this is a great little pocket-sized sketchbook. Love it. You can do some washing— washes on it if you want. Um, anyway, these are just sketches I did in the city, so I have that in the front flap. I have— these are some sketches I did when I was away here. Quick travel sketches. This is really, really loose sketch of the Biltmore. Oh my gosh, we could— I could do a whole episode about the Biltmore. You will be seeing some Biltmore sketches that I'm going to be creating based on the photos I took when I went there. Amazing, amazing place. This was done very quickly outside when I first got there. This is probably a, I don't know, 3 to 5 minute sketch, we'll say. So boom, sketch that really quick. Uh, here's a sketch of the greenhouse I did. These were all really quick sketches because I— there was so much to see there, see there, so I wanted to capture things quickly, keep moving on. This is a part of the conservatory building. And I was really captured by these kind of the backside of the Conservatory Building, these kind of industrial-looking structures. Quick, quick sketches. Other than that, I didn't really do many other sketches there. I took a lot of photographs. I just wanted to cover as much as I could in about 3 hours of time. Here's some other sketches I did on site at the workshop area. This was a pretty funky looking contemporary style building. This is actually an abstraction of the inn, the Assembly Inn, where we were staying. I kind of sketched it so it almost looked like a ruin type of building. So it's made of all stone. So that was pretty cool. Uh, this was a sketch. This is actually— believe it or not, this is a bridge here looking back towards a porch, covered porch area. So it's a perspective view. Uh, here's another quick sketch of that contemporary building. I just wanted to capture kind of the roof shape on there. Some other really quick ink sketches. This one I like, it's a vignette of 3 different pieces of architecture that were there. This is an abstract, this is actually an abstract sketch from the airport, sitting inside the airport looking out the window. I was just— I was trying to play around with doing just a very, very— how would you say it— not detailed drawing, just line work. This is looking back at a door, some glass panels. This is a roof overhang here. And then I said, you know what, let me try some Airport equipment. I don't— these are, I guess, the carts they're used for pulling, the luggage carts. They're almost like tractors. I guess they are tractors. So I wanted to do a tractor-type sketch. Tried doing it as a single line sketch, although when I got to the wheel, that's not single line. But a lot of this is kind of a single line sketch. Here, it was kind of fun. So, uh, so this Lockbie Field Journal is definitely a workhorse. Again, I have not only that in there, I have another plain sketchbook in there. I have also a gridded book in here where I have notes and stuff in it. Couple of pens. There's a pouch back here that I think I have my Cheap Joe sticker in there I didn't take out. There we go, I got Cheap Joe sticker from the workshop. I'll actually use this pouch to put a portable —what do you call those things?—power pack, battery pack in here, which is cool. Back here I have— you guys have seen Ruud talk about this drawing pad. So he gave everybody a drawing pad like this in the workshop and encouraged us to do sketches and hand them out at dinnertime or whatever. So that was a lot of fun. I gave a maybe, I don't know, 6 sketches out or something of different things. These are just some loose— these are just some fun drawings I did. This is sitting inside the airplane looking out at another airplane, very abstract. I wrote the caption "Quit complaining" because people in front of me were just complaining that we were sitting on the tarmac, so I sketched that. That was fun. Yeah, sometimes I don't even know what I sketch. I gotta— oh, it goes this way. Oh, another loose abstract kind of sketch looking out the window. Here's the airplane wing here. And then another quick little airport vignette. Kind of the tower. What do you call that? Oh, hey, Chip's in the house. Good to see you, Chip. Hope all's well. Oh my gosh, what do you call that tower at the airport? Control Tower. This is looking out the window at the Control Tower. You see a little kind of plane in there. I love these little thumbnail sketches. Here's my thumb. Um, thumbnail sketches are actually my favorite type of sketches to do in the world. I love small thumbnail sketches, and that's just college. College, we had to sketch ideas and concepts quickly, and I would end up doing a lot of thumbnail sketches to get those ideas out of my head and onto paper. This is a sketch from one of the buildings where we were staying. And this is— oh, this was just— this is just my imagination. This isn't a real thing. I was just sketching it from my imagination, a little perspective view and a waterfall coming down here. A bridge in the background. Yeah, these pads, as Ru has told us, you know, or suggested, they're really good for just for drawing. So it was so cool. So I just slipped it back in the field journal. So if you guys want to know more about these field journals, you can go to my website. I have a link on there. You can check it out. Really cool stuff. Awesome. All right, let's— we'll wrap up, see how this is drying, what we worked on earlier. Boom, there we go. This, this is actually looking really cool. Look at how this is drying down here, guys. That's really awesome. I love the rusty color that's happening in here. You know, I'm a huge fan of, like, industrial buildings and the grungy look. This is really cool. Awesome. Chip says I'm late. Chip, you can't be late, man. I didn't even say I was going to be on, so you can't be late if I didn't give you a time. You're never late. I'm looking forward to sketching with Chip in August if everything works out for both of us. Everything aligns with our times. That's going to be incredible. I am super, super stoked for that. Dearest says, travel sketches, amazing memories and sketching quick and photographs more, uh, more to later for sure. He got a bridge even in nice line work, Jason Nicholas Nicholas. Hey, thank you, DeRay. Yeah, travel sketches, I love doing travel sketches. Just like you said, memories and capturing a moment. Um, Airplane Complaining, thumbnail sketches. Thanks to you, Ray. Hey, you guys are awesome. Thank you so much for watching. Um, this, this painting here will be available. Um, I'm gonna offer it to Linda first if she's interested. Um, if not, we'll put it out there, but I think it's gonna be, um, yeah, I think it's gonna dry really, really nicely. I'll just do a quick pan around and we're out of here, guys, because I have school. But I have spring break next week. Yes, we have a short week this week and we're on spring break next week, so I am super excited for a staycation. All right, here we go. You get a close-up pan around. Look at these colors! Look at this, is so awesome here.

Wow, dang.

Again, we didn't really use too many different colors on this. I really want to pan on here. I think the road is the star of this one tonight. Ooh la la, this man, that's really cool. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching. I appreciate all you do, all your positivity, all your encouragement. I appreciate you guys sharing what you're doing and putting your positivity and encouragement out there. Your artwork is incredible. I love seeing what you guys are making. Becky says Rainbow Bridge. Yeah, Becky, that's a great name for this piece. If that's cool with you, Becky, I'd like to name it that, Rainbow Bridge. Give me a yay or nay if you're cool with me just using you— you're, uh, not using you, using your name for this. That would be so fun. I like that rainbow bridge. It's exactly what it looks like, all the colors in there. Love the tiny bird too. I love the tiny bird too. Linda says she loves the tiny bird. Linda says she's interested. Oh cool, Linda. Awesome. Yeah, we'll talk in chat. That would be great. Definitely. Um, the close-up is great. Cool. Hey, Sally Ann Smith is in the house! Sally Ann Smith, great to see you. Hope all's well. Good stuff. I have a piece here of art that I have to mail out, that I will be mailing out. Boom, this cool sketch of the Lions Bridge. So this will be going out in the mail tomorrow afternoon. This was a fun sketch. This is just thin paper, but it came out really nice. Ink and colored pencil. Aight dudes, as the kids say, aight, have a great night. Becky's totally cool with it. Thank you, Becky, I appreciate that. I will, uh, give you credit for the name, the title. Thank you. D-Ray says Rainbow Bridge. Yeah, we're gonna call it the rain— I'm gonna do it right now. Rainbow Bridge. Um, actually, I won't— I'm not gonna do it now. I'm gonna wait till I'm done. I like to write the title and sign it as the last thing. Guys, enjoy your Monday. Oh, look all the way down to the bridge. Tiny bird all the way down the bridge. Tiny bird. Let's zoom in, guys. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, right here. That is so cool. I don't honestly even remember making that mark on there. That's so funny. That is so cool you saw that. Love it. Love it. That's one of the cool things about doing things very loose, um, is it leaves it open for interpretation. It draws the viewer in, gives them more encouragement, or, or more of a buy-in to kind of explore what's going on, right? So sometimes less detail is better. I— for me, it's better to have people look more at what I made. Hopefully that makes sense. All right, guys, have a great, great night. I am out of here. Thank you again. I appreciate everybody so much. Have a great Monday. Peace, and live creatively. I'll see you guys really soon. Take care. Finish button. It's right there. Boom! Got it. Good night, guys.